ING makes changes to mortgage conversion rate

ING Direct has changed the way it calculates conversion rates to provide a more immediate reward for brokers who facilitate mortgages through the lender. The move comes following consultation with aggregators and ING’s broker network, the bank said.

“The changes to the manner in which we calculate conversions will have a negligible impact on broker commissions based on our retrospective analysis during our review,” said ING head of broker sales Mark Woolnough.

Under the current conversion model, applications over a six month period are included in the conversion rate. This means that, if a broker has a bad month or two, they currently carry this legacy for the remaining say four months.

“Under the new model, the legacy of these bad months will extinguish quicker than the previous model and therefore won’t have such a long lasting effect on a broker’s conversion rate,” Woolnough said.

The new conversion criteria and calculations will come into effect for applications received from 1 April and commission payments beginning 1 October.